Thanks. Its getting there. I was going to go home and work on it tonight and tomorrow because I've got a race sunday. BUT the aluminum exhaust I'm working on fabbing for some who's also racing is like half way tacked so I'm likely going to be up all night finishing that for him. Then I'll just have to head home tomorrow and only get the vital stuff done.

My fenders are already cut to fit the hoosiers, my dad took care of that this week. I need to install the new front hubs with long studs so that I can fit the 15x9 949s with 275s that I'm borrowing because they need a 1/4" spacer to not hit the shock mount on full compression. And install the skunk2 TB because my new kit of parts came. And I need to see about tightening up the rear coolant adapter again because it was dribbling at jersey. If it still leaks or I cant get it tighter then I'm going to assume that the thermostat slipped out of the groove when I put it back together and thats causing it. I wont have time to fix that this week.

Well I ended up racing another turbo miata in SSM. 65/138 in PAX, about normal for me. Car was on hoosiers, but has custom rear control arms that induce roll steer on purpose, because he likes how it feels. It was a blast, it just felt weird every time I turned the wheel, it was like driving a 240sx with hicas.

The reason I didnt race mine is that it seems to be gushing oil out the rear main seal. There is a puddle of engine oil mixed with what seems to be clutch dust under my car and all over the tranny and the cross brace under the tranny. I made sure the VC and the CAS blockoff werent leaking. And my begi re-rout is still leaking, I'm about to give up on paper gaskets altogether and just RTV everything. And one of the bolts between the engine mount and the block vibrated loose when I took the car out to get gas and asses how bad the oil leak was. With the stack of small problems I felt it was going to be best to not race it, especially since I was driving it there and back. And the water temp gauge has a break in the wire somewhere between the 8way connector on the engine harness and the gauge cluster, with the coolant leak and needing the laptop to have any idea of the coolant temp I didnt want to risk it.

Well I found the culprit of my oil leak, I think. This little guy here was rubbing against the flywheel.

And when I separated the pan.

And if you look at the bottom there you can see the mark of where the banana seal was and how it was pinched.

I'm taking no chances and I'll be replacing the rear main as well. I bought this engine never wanting to have to think about things like this, and I'm going to make damn sure that when I re-do it I'll never have to think about it.

Sooooo many ARP fasteners. And SOOOOOO much black RTV. I swear there was like 3 tubes of the stuff in there, its everywhere.

I also fixed the issue with my patch harness that happened in jersey, and while I was in there I re purposed the 2 I/Os being used for A/C in the patch harness for the clutch switch and the vics. I'm cheating a little bit, I'm reusing the wire that goes to the a/c relay for the vics and I'll be pulling power for it from that connector. And I removed that relay and bracket. Unfortunately with how my setup is currently wired I need to leave the a/c fan relay in the car for the a/c fan to work. I dont feel like changing that right now. And I have a feeling in a year I'll decide the a/c fan in unneeded and I'll just pull that stuff out to save weight.
I also still couldn't find the break in the dash temp gauge wiring, it must be under the dash or something. I feel like that'll be a project for another day.

Also this weekend, my dad told me to stop being a ***** and to just put this in when the engine goes back in. Rather than dealing with making sure only the current leaks are fixed.

I also got really pissed off at my fuel routing for some reason (its a pain to pull the engine and the upper intake manifold because of it) so I ordered a bunch of fittings and lines from AN fittings direct (and a couple from summit) to completely re do it with custom lines. I would have gone with plumbing monkey but they didnt have any lines listed for E85 use, and I really wanted to try them out since its the same company as silicone intakes. So I'm going to be making a whole boat load of AN lines next weekend I think. 3 lines for fuel and 2 for turbo oil, ok, not a boat load.

First, a question. Can I run my bypass valve manifold signal off that port on the front of runner #1 that also feeds the vac chamber for the VICS?

Got it put back together. Used about 1/4 the amount of rtv that trackspeed used, just enough for it to ooze, and I wiped off the ooze after torquing for that professional look. No pics. I can see how they managed to pinch the banana gasket in the back. When i was torquing the pan down it really wanted to squeeze out, I ended up torquing all but the long bolts and the last rear bolts to spec. Those rear 4 bolts I torqued to ~50inlbs. Rear main was a tiny bit crooked when I pulled it out, wasnt sure if it was leaking, replaced it anyways. I DO NOT want to pull the engine again this season.

Before I put the engine back in I did a little weight reduction/down pipe clearancing.

When I finished putting the driveshaft in I got a little distracted doing some weight reduction.

I really need to get around to fixing that.

Engine in

Hold side charge pipe made.

Its tight on every thing but it has a total of ~200* of bend in it. I'm not worried, with these mounts the engine doesnt move much.

I was going to make oil, water, and fuel lines this weekend BUT I rand into supply problems. I didnt quite have the right fittings to clear everything for my oil lines, and I damaged the threads on the oil drain fitting for the turbo side with the wrench. I couldnt screw in my 45* water line nipples because the compressor backing plate was in the way and its not easy to take off like the compressor cover. And I couldnt source a 37* flare tool locally, to do the fuel lines. I also didnt like how close the nylon braided oil hose was going to be getting to the manifold, the design of the manifold that I had when I bought the line didnt have that issue, so I bought stainless line and new fittings. And to make it all match I just got new stuff for the drain as well.

I also pulled out the rest of the exhaust today, to make room for the new stuff. I sized up the borla its gonna fit perfectly. Only choice now is, drivers side or center exit. The ricer in me wants that 3" turn down to happen in the center. This is the street and local exhaust. Non-sound regulated stuff is just going to be the two resonators with under car dump. Now that I've had a hit off the custom muffler aluminum exhaust crack pipe, I kind of wish I was doing that.

Lol the turbo drain is terrible. I've already ordered fittings to try to make it not crammed between the subframe, steering rack, steering column, and IC pipe, and not basically flat. Its really tough because I only need like 4 inches of line if I go straight so I pretty much need to get it perfectly lined up with the fittings and have a straight piece of line.

And I spent all morning yesterday helping my dad buy a beautiful 97 STO. This car. Holy crap. It is SO tight. The interior, trunk, and engine bay you can eat out of. The thing is so ******* clean. I don't believe the 104k miles on the odometer, it should be more like 20k. There is a touch of rocker rot just starting and a baseball dent on the drivers rear quarter, but that can easily be fixed.

I still need to finish the exhaust. I ran out of filler and argon at the same time I've got the "nationals" exhaust finished besides making the v-banded turn down for it. But I only got the axle back section of the exhaust tacked up, I'm going to finish weld it down here in worcester. Even with the nationals exhaust it wasn't terribly loud. Car is running straight wastegate pressure pulled off the compressor cover. Boost is about 6psi, comes on a bit lazy but still hits full boost before 4k. With how gentle the boost comes on right now and only about 6 psi it doesnt break the rs3's free in a straight line on clean new pavement in 2nd and just feels like a really big N/A engine. No appreciable lag. But I wasnt hammering on it took much because I just took it like 1/4 mile down some back roads next to my house that are only 1.5 cars wide. Next weekend is gonna be fun. Hoosiers, check. aero, check. turbo, check. No idea what the alignment and corner weights are, check.

So I still need to finish the exhaust, fix the oil line, and cut the hood. I also decided to raise the car, because the sister car stopped breaking axles once he raised the ride height and I was just around the same height that he was. Car also needs a bunch of tuning, I need to figure out if the vics is setup right too.

After next weekend I need to pull the rear shock assemblies apart again and rearrange them because they're assembled wrong according to the video emillio came out with last month.

Yes, that is rubber hose and hardware store pipe fittings. Why? Because AN hose ends are too ******* long. I have like $300 worth of AN stuff in this size, I could not get any of it to work because the hose ends and such ended up giving me like 1 inch of exposed hose, and I couldnt get a perfect alignment with hose ends. I forgot to take a picture of the cut hood.

Got the exhaust done, no good pics of it. Its not terribly loud. Just driving it on the street a bit it doesnt seem any louder inside the car than the stock one. Though 90% of the noise when sitting in the car is the interior vibrating because of the engine mounts.

Saturday I took the car out for its first drive with the turbo in it for a considerable distance. Car was randomly loosing power for a split second and the tach would drop to 0 even though the engine was still reving. After 4 miles the car pretty much died and I could get it to re-start sometimes but it wouldnt stay running. Sometimes I could hear the fuel pump prime other times I couldnt. I've got a universal relay on the fuel pump because mine died last year (new 044 fuel pump at the same time). I just tried hard wring the pump and it stayed running long enough to pull it onto the trailer before it cutout again.

I figured it must be the god damn main relay problem that some people seem to have with stand alones. I wired in a universal relay in place of the main relay. Car started right up. I didnt feel like taking it out again at like 9pm and maybe breaking down again so I just let it sit and idle for like half an hour, no problems, besides stalling the second the cooling fans kicked on, as usual.

I get it out to race, was cutting out intermittently again, but the tach not going to zero. Sometimes the fuel pump would prime sometimes it wouldnt. I got one good run in, car was stupid fast. Next run it died mid course, just was getting no fuel even though I could hear the fuel pump running. I could get it to start but it would immediately die after catching like it just wasnt getting any more fuel injected. Pushed it half a mile back into grid. Did my last run in a 90 civic sedan, jump back in my car, pump primes, starts right up and I drive it over to the trailer like its a perfectly normal street car.

Most times when it dies I loose connection to the ecu with the laptop, even though the car stays powered. And then even after I get the car re-started I wont be able to connect again without waiting a couple minutes with the key off and the laptop unplugged from the ecu. This of course could be an AEM software issue, or a laptop issue, Haltech software does the same thing all the damn time.

After racing it, took off the air dam.

Most of that is from when I drove off the run way when the car died to try to not slow down the event.

And someone wanted to see my splitter mounting, heres the best I could get.

Dyno scheduled for 10am on Monday the 17th at Flatout Motorsports. After that, corner weight and alignment, at the same place.

Got the car fixed. There was a ground hiding behind a trap door that had almost vibrated out.

The TPS wires were iffy, so were the cam sensor. And the real kicker. The AEM EMS4 has a random issue that if there isnt a password on the tune that it'll fail to initialize, they have known about it for like a year and are "still working on the new firmware". Unfortunately the password is limited to 6 characters so I can put #!#!#!#!AEM as the password.

The clutch switch and VICS still dont work, which is odd, but I cant figure it out as to why.

Quick update from the garage. I made the VICS work, apparently the basemap I got from trackspeed had GPIO 3 set as the shift light AND the a/c relay. I found the AC relay part but it took someone from AEM to find the shift light because that setting is very well hidden. I also got the 2 step to work, apparently I just needed to unplug the neutral switch from the tranny and that made it work fine. Now i'm going to pull the rear shocks apart and put them back together according to emillios video, then make an air box for the filter, then finish the "low downforce" aero so I can drive the car on the street with aero to the dyno/cornerbalance/alignment place.

I'm not happy. We spent most of dyno fixing the car. This is wastegate pressure with the fuel dialed in and a little timing added. They were trying to get me off the dyno to get a racecar on there, because they have a TnT tomorrow that they're trying to get to.

Boost actually creeps up to almost 10 and then drops off again. It did hit 12 psi at one point because the wastegate arm was hitting the V-Band clamp, we spent a while twisting the clamp. I think I still have more issues to sort out with the car before going back to try and hold that 200ftlbs out to redline. But I'm going to go with this is the least amount of power you can make with the EFR, on a dynojet this is about 230ftlbs/280hp according to the dyno guy.

I drove it down, got some honks and waves from random people, and I heard one guy taking pictures. It died ~10 times on the way down, the cam sensor is what comes loose, the pin lock for the connector is in the mail. And I ran into a bunch of random issues there. Apparently the timing gains with revs, IE lock the timing at 10 deg, put the timing light on it, its 10 deg, rev it up and it slowly increases to like 12 @ 3k and we didnt try any higher. Also apparently the on the ignition coils were too open and would lose connection. After it died one time and wouldn't restart we compression tested it, 160 across the board, lower than I would like, but acceptable. I left it there to get aligned and corner weighted, friday I'll pick it up because there's evo school saturday and a race sunday, hopefully it'll work. I'll eventually setup the boost control, but its still in shake down mode.

My 5 speed trembles at the thought of ALLOFIT. I wasnt concerned today because I was dynoing next to about 8 minata 5 speeds in various states of rebuild and a crap load of tranny parts. But i'm trying to keep it below ~250ftlbs (dynojet) to keep the 5 speed together for a while.

No, boost is going to be coming on a whole lot sooner. And it looks like I'm going to need to add in more and more boost as I get over 6500 rpm, the goal is a reading on 320hp on this dyno while keeping under 210ftlbs.

This was an interesting weekend. So it starts off friday evening picking up the car from Flatout Motorsports. Tow took forever because of rush hour traffic, over 2 hours to go 75 miles. I was following in the wrx, brake lights are stuck on on the trailer. Truck gets some thumbs up from so ferd diesel with a 5 or 6 inch exhaust pipe. Some random miata with Kentucky plates gives the thumbs up and tries desperately to get behind the trailer, but I'm blocking everyone out since the brake lights dont work. Turns out the bulbs were like half way turned out and the contact for the brake light was touching the brake and tail contacts.

Evo phase I school saturday. Car goes great, I throw down a 30.5something clean in the morning set your bar type runs. Get my first 2 instructed runs, and the instructor does 2 and they car dies out again like it has been. Rip all the **** out of the wrx, set the shocks up, go out and do a run. My brain is still functioning at ssm miata speeds that are just not possible in the wrx. So my instructor goes to do one run, brake pedal goes to the floor pull off, I blew a stainless braided brake line. Of course the brake line is special for this year and there's only one in all of the north east at a subie dealership almost 3 hours away. I manage to finagle someone to pick it up for tomorrow. I get offered a ride in a boxster to finish off those runs since I was 0 for 2 on running cars.

I know the miata problem is a cam sensor now, I've been through everything else. Get one from someone else, plastic molding of it is completely different. The one that came on my engine must have just been a piece of ****. If you're still reading this, good job. Toss in a borrowed one off another car, run cherry for the next 8 runs in the "look ahead, dammit" part of evo school. Get in from the 8th run to do one more, car is idling at 2500, just figure the spring got jammed of the skunk 2 or that screw backed out. NOPE. Pull out of line, park it, unplug the iac, no idle change. Go to plug the iac back in and it runs away from me, one of the bolts backed out. Run to the hardware store and get new bolts. I knew this bolt would back out, the bolt skunk wants you to use for this only gets ~2 threads or less of engagement because the next size up bottoms out, I just threw a washer on the next size up and went out then drove like **** for my last 3 runs to try and beat my morning time. I was on 200something run hoosiers on 15x9s they were just gone and I kept ******* up different parts worse than I did in the morning, I'd like to blame the tires but I should have been able to drive around it. After the event try to fit my gorgeous new 15x10 spinwerks with much newer hoosiers, I need to cut the rear fenders. Go home feeling decent.

I got a hookup for a new cam sensor and my dad threw it in sunday morning as I was setting up. I got the subie brake line and some spare super blue. Got my flare nut wrench, wont get the nut off the line. Spray some pb blaster on it and let it sit for a while while I go run.

This car is stupid fast. I need power steering, I have blisters from driving the car. After my first run I was in first in SSM until the other turbo miata bumped me out on his first run. I ended up 4th after the 1st heat.

I had to vice grip the flare nut on the subaru. Get the new line on there. I have just enough super blue to fill the reservoir, not enough to bleed that line, haggle for some random dot4 parts store stuff, good enough. Go to bleed realize I forgot a tube for bleeding. But I've shot the **** and done other random crap, ate lunch and it was time to run again. Go out and blast a 61.56something 3 second improvement from my fast morning run, had one of the left over evo instructors in the car, basically said I was late the whole back runway for like 2 seconds worth of time. But its hard as **** to stay ahead in this car, its just physically demanding. Guy in first in an elise has a 61.50something at this point he coned at 60 something and I just fucked up somehow terribly in the first two slaloms and then drove better on the main runway but the really fucked up bad in those slaloms so it was no help and I think I coned. Then I bled the brakes in the wrx.

So I came in 2nd in basically my first event in a new car, it didnt break, catch on fire, or blow up, lets call this a success.

And on another note. My turbo setup weighs ~80 pounds more than the stock exhaust and intake. I could spend a grand right now and take 10 pounds of out that with just intercooler, and then spend another few hundred and a couple weeks to make a new aluminum exhaust and take another 10-20 out. The car is sitting at 2224 pounds without driver 180 pounds over weight.